Blogging on liberty, capitalism, reason, international affairs and foreign policy, from a distinctly libertarian and objectivist perspective

Friday, August 07, 2009

Daily Telegraph odds and ends

Greek woman sets fire to British sexual assaulter: After resisting his advances, after pouring Sambuca on him to cool him down, the guy wouldn’t stop. So the woman set fire to the man, to the cheer of onlookers – gave herself to the Police claiming self defence. The young man’s dad said “He's not the kind of lad that gets himself in trouble – he's a kind-hearted, generous boy”. He now has second degree burns for being a drunken fool.

HIV genome decoded: Scientists at the University of North Carolina claim to have decoded the entire HIV genome, raising hopes of new treatments to neutralise the virus. Given that drug therapy in recent years has significantly extended the life expectancy of HIV carriers, this may well be the next chance for a breakthrough.

Beetroot juice increases stamina: The University of Exeter's School of Sport and Health Sciences has found that a glass a day of beetroot juice can help men work out for 16% longer.

Woman who drink two glasses of red wine a day have better sex lives: You might expect the University of Florence to undertake THIS study. Overall, women who drank two glasses a day scored an average of 27.3 points (sexual arousal points), compared to 25.9 for those who drank one glass and 24.4 for the non-drinkers. Whether this continues to rise with each glass is a moot point, but it no doubt makes the drink feel like it is better! No doubt it also improves the sex lives of the men (and even women) they meet too.

BBC move to cost over £800 million: Whilst businesses sometimes shift from London to the regions to save money, the BBC’s move of the sports department and Radio 5 to Manchester is going to cost money. Proving once again, how unaccountable government organizations can be when the money they have to spent was taken by force by people who may not want its services anyway.

Iran executes 24 drug traffickers in mass execution: The second biggest (known) executor of prisoners continues form (I say known, because there are more than one or two governments that do this rather informally and privately). 219 people are known to have been executed in Iran since the start of the year. The total last year was 246. Of course many don't sympathise with drug traffickers, assuming of course the said individuals had a fair trial, that they were violent and forcing drugs on people or supplying children, hmmm. Oh and Iran has a horrendous drug addiction problem, demonstrating how effective a deterrent this is!

Sonia Sotomayer confirmed as latest US Supreme Court judge: True to those who value what is skindeep over character, most of the publicity about this is that she is a Hispanic woman. That is a first for the US Supreme Court. However, this is also a woman who once said "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”. Objective is she? The Cato Institute thinks she wouldn’t be in the running if she were not Hispanic.

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About Me

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Politics, philosophy and economics from a pro-capitalist, libertarian, objectivist perspective. Born in New Zealand, live in the UK, career has been in transport, telecommunications and infrastructure policy.